Crosseyed and Painless

We’re all spun now in this never ending he said/she said battle, while being fed rations of gossip-ridden gumbo every day by the talking heads and print media.  We’re urged to base the depth of our political knowledge not on the social and economical impact of the decisions made by our leaders, but instead on the depth of our capacity for bickering amongst one another over who’s more of a scumbag, who lied more, and whether an attack should be condoned or vilified. Who threw the first punch? Who was justified in lashing out because of what? Who’s taking the high road? Who approved the funding needed to build the high road? Who’s hiding what, and why are they justified or not justified in doing so?

We’re allowing the media to deviate from relaying facts and instead reside in the realm of arbitrary for as long as people are interested in bickering over a certain thing. When a particular derision has been squeezed of all its bile, there’s always another one on its way down the conveyor belt that can easily be spun into an ‘us vs. them’ saga. As it’s apparently the paramount goal of the media of our generation to now divert attention from facts and reality and instead turn the entire process, one that affects each and every one of us in specific ways, into a never ending episode of ‘Melrose Place’.

On some days, all you see posted in internet blogs are rants about the fluff, inciting an arena for people, under the protection of cyber-anonymity, to clutter each others’ minds in a supposedly intellectual way by throwing feces at one another. Through this, our brains are repeatedly beaten into submission and taken in to slavery. The presidential race is no longer ours, nor does it belong to the candidates. Instead it belongs to the influential talking heads and agenda driven print pundits who are too easily able to crack the whip and turn our slave minds into washing machines. We launder the spin and allow them to turn it into the story, rather than it being a method of telling the story. We voluntarily legitimize their version of reality, then attempt to peck each others’ eyeballs out, all the while ingesting talking point after talking point aimed at accomplishing nothing more than to encourage self mutilation of ourselves from the brain down.

The spin, and our addiction to it on both sides, has allowed the press to become the story. It’s allowed the realities of policy decisions and ideas on what to do to make the country better to take a permanent back seat to whatever the press tells us we should be arguing about on a given day. In fact the real stuff isn’t even on the back seat; it’s tied up and gagged in the trunk. The real stuff is kept safely away so as not to divert our attention from the fluff to what our tax dollars are actually facilitating behind the curtain.

I read pieces written by people that state facts and arguable points of view concerning the science involved in making America a better place, but these are generally overlooked in lieu of the gossip that we naturally flock to. Our lives are impacted by the actions of politicians every day, but these actions are covered minimally, while the drama is dissected in every imaginable way. How many people on average understand how our economy works? How much of an impact does consumer spending have? What is GDP and what does it mean when it’s reduced? If you judged by the spun up drivel we’re fed everyday in the form of ‘political news’, those things wouldn’t appear to be important at all.

Why? Because it’s all about making money, it’s about catering to a market who’ll stick with you because they like how you describe things, how you apply your particular spin style, or how viciously you insult and berate those on the opposing side. Diverting attention from reality is paramount because, unfortunately for the talking heads and print media, facts do and always will exist whether any of them care to admit it or not. Facts aren’t biased, nor are facts partisan or arbitrary in nature. Drive-thru news outlets would anger their customers if they focused too much on the facts. So they keep our heads chained inside cages with unlocked doors for specific a purpose. To ensure their profitability and survival remains in tact, at the expense of objectivity and the necessary accountability of our leaders. By pushing our buttons in a precise way, while always pointing out that the door to the cage is open, we’re lulled into a deep and blissful state where nothing is what it seems and all of us are always right.

We’re mental slaves to this chicanery. The political media in America has now taken over the role of enslaving minds from government and religion, and the proof surrounds us. We’re not different than our neighbor now because we pray to a different God, as that would be prejudiced and wrong. Now we’re different than our neighbors based on what version of spin we chose to allow into the laundry room of our minds. Bias has become the story, and in this extended battle of bias vs. bias, the only losers are you and I.